The answer is: Adolf Hitler.
It is the answer to the question, “Who is #1 on lists of the most hated person in history?”
Other potent potentates include Ivan the Terrible and a handful of Russians; Gengish Kahn, Attila the Hun, Saladin, and Chairman Mao.
Bloody Mary, anyone? Queen Mary tops the women’s lists.
We should add two names: Jesus, and yours.
Jesus said, “[Since] the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you” (v18).
Most of us don’t seem to be experiencing the hatred Jesus spoke of. Nevertheless, all of us are subjected to it – if you look behind the scenes.
You are the special hatred of the person behind all the insane dictators throughout history.
The devil hates you. The Bible says he accuses you day and night before God. He is described as a lion, on the hunt to devour you. Towards that end, the devil has a malevolent agenda that he employs nonbelievers to carry out against believers.
I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1 The Lord You Love Is The World’s Hated Man, and #2 The Lord Who Loves You Sends You To Love The Haters.
#1 – The Lord You Love Is The World’s Hated Man (15:18-25)
Haters gonna hate.
If you want something that sounds more academic, J.C. Ryle writes,
“Let us realize that human nature never changes, that “the carnal mind is enmity against God,” and against God’s image in His people. Let us settle it in our minds that no holiness of life or consistency of conduct will ever prevent wicked people hating the servants of Christ, just as they hated their blameless Master. Let us remember these things, and then we shall not be disappointed.”
Joh 15:18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
“If” means since. The world most definitely hated Jesus and, therefore, it hates you.
Theologians parse the biblical concept of “the world” in five ways: the physical world, the human world, the moral world, the temporal world, and the coming world.
The physical world includes all of Creation, but it mainly refers to Earth.
The human world is all the people living on Earth.
The moral world are the people in the world who are indifferent or hostile to God.
We live in the temporary world that will be destroyed in favor of the coming world.
For our purposes today, “the world” means the indifferent and hostile people on Earth who are in spiritual darkness. Satan is “the god of this world” of mankind. He employs one-third of the created angels, and many other kinds of supernatural creatures, e.g., “principalities… powers… the rulers of the darkness of this age… [and] spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
He additionally has multitudes of human boots on the ground.
He takes captive nonbelievers to help him carry out his will against God’s people (Second Timothy 2:26).
The forces of evil marshaled against us are indeed formidable. For our part, we may be few, but we are strong, because He indwells us.
Do you, everyday, expect to be hated? Are you surprised when not hated?
It isn’t defeatist. It is realistic. It does no good, and it may bring harm, to sugarcoat the opposition of the world. Early warning of storms preserves life. Consider yourself in a state of constant ‘early warned.’
Joh 15:19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
These verses are full with what we are going to call über-uplifting. The first über-uplift is that, since you are hated by unbelievers, without cause, it is evidence you belong to Jesus. You are among those Jesus “chose… out of the world.”
Uh oh. Did Jesus just say, “chose?” Yes, He did, but not in the sense of choosing them for salvation. This is not the Doctrine of Election. He wasn’t looking back to eternity past. They were in the world when Jesus chose them to serve.
Jesus chooses you, too, after you are saved, to serve Him. When you believe Jesus, He gives you the gift of God the Holy Spirit indwelling you. For His part, God the Holy Spirit gives you a supernatural gift or gifts. He does it according to His own determination, not ours. Call this über-uplift #2.
Joh 15:20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
They would be sent out to share Jesus. They would be hated, which led to persecution. To be persecuted for the Lord is a third über-uplift. Or, it can be, if we understand it properly.
Some people would “keep” their word. Nonbelievers would hear the Word, be saved, born-again, immersed into the life of the Church, and receive the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. Your sharing of the Gospel might plant a seed in the heart of a nonbeliever, or water a seed already planted. It might even harvest that seed. A person headed to Hell is thus transformed by your witness. Is that not uplifting? It is – #4.
Joh 15:21 But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.
Jesus repeatedly told His followers that He and God the Father were one. He said that if you saw Him, you saw the Father. The Jewish leadership refused to believe Jesus was equal with God. They convinced themselves Jesus was a blasphemer. If the Jews thought Jesus was a blasphemer, that would extend to all those who followed Him.
Joh 15:22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
Of course, they had sin. Every human conceived, Jew or Gentile, has sin imputed to their spiritual account.
If they are born and live, every human inherits a sin nature. Then we all commit individual sins, falling short of the glory of God.
A.W. Pink writes,
“The generation to which Jesus came bore a greater responsibility than any previous generation, because men and women of earlier days had not heard His teaching or seen His mighty works, as His own contemporaries did. His own contemporaries for the most part rejected His teaching and refused to admit the evidence of His works. Therefore they compared unfavorably with pagans like the queen of Sheba who was impressed by Solomon’s wisdom or the people of Nineveh who repented at Jonah’s preaching. Indeed, the cities which had been the centers of his ministry would receive severer judgment on the great day than the sinners of Sodom.”
God holds a person accountable for the witness he or she has received. Before the Gospel comes to a person, they have the witness of conscience within, and creation without.
Pricked by their conscience, and aware there is a Creator, God expects them to seek Him. He will provide more revelation, sufficient to lead to salvation.
There is no excuse in most of the civilized world to refuse the salvation offered by Jesus Christ. We have conscience, creation, and Christians sharing the Gospel.
Joh 15:23 He who hates Me hates My Father also.
The Jewish leaders convinced themselves they were so in love with God that they must murder Jesus to preserve and protect His glory. You cannot hate Jesus and love God.
G.K. Chesterton said, “There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”
If nonbelievers hate Jesus so much, why do they seem, for the most part, so indifferent about Him?
They may not be hearing all of the Gospel.
The first martyr of the church age was Stephen. Giving an answer for himself to the Jews, he reviewed the history of Israel. It was going well, until he said, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”
Stephen told them they were sinners, a point often suppressed.
Whatever Happened to Sin? In 1973, psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote a book with that title. In a review I read, I learned that,
“In his book the doctor projected the day would come when sin would no longer be a descriptor of human behavior. He speculated that the explanation of sin and wrongdoing would be replaced by rationalizations excusing individual accountability.
Menninger predicted the term “sin” would be replaced with words like illness, disorder, dysfunction, syndrome, etc. The human condition would be excused as a product of biochemistry, environment, experience, and trauma. He projected that even crime would go unpunished as criminal activity would be justified and minimized as the result of some medical abnormality for which one could not be held responsible.”
It’s another type of “Replacement Theology,” replacing repentance from sin, and faith in Jesus. People need to know they are sinners, in need of salvation, which can only, exclusively, be found by believing Jesus. The Cross is thus offensive to those in the devil’s kingdom of darkness.
Joh 15:24 If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father.
The “works which no one else did” were the innumerable miracles the Lord performed – incredible healings, dramatic exorcisms, raising the dead.
These were predicted in the Old Testament as evidence of the Messiah. “No one else” but the Savior of the World could do these works.
Get this: Those works, being true history, are still evidence Jesus was the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
Joh 15:25 But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘THEY HATED ME WITHOUT A CAUSE.’
Several times, in the Psalms, David reported he was “hated… without cause.”
I think we are on über-uplift #5. When you are hated solely for Christ’s sake, you are fulfilling Scripture.
An un-human, inhuman, inhumane despot is the god of this world. The Rolling Stones barely scratched the surface of Satan’s hatred for Jesus and Christians when they sang,
I rode a tank, Held a general’s rank, When the blitzkrieg raged, And the bodies stank.
We see his hatred expressed in the moral world, or I guess we might say, the immoral world. Christian values are imploding. We are living in the first chapter of the Book of Romans, in verses 18-32, in terms of hostility toward God. Powers that be are indoctrinating children to believe irrational lies about biology, sexuality, and truth in general. Spend only a little time on social media, or watching news, and it becomes clear that hatred for all that is righteous is the prevailing atmosphere.
As much as we work to affect change, as individually led, no real, lasting change will come unless sinner’s hearts are transformed. The Gospel, and nothing else, is the power of God to salvation.
#2 – The Lord Who Loves You Sends You To Love The Haters (15:26 – 16:3)
John Newton wrote, “When we look at the ungodly, we are not to hate them – but to pity them, mourn over them, and pray for them. Nor have we any right to boast over them; for, by nature, and of ourselves, we are no better than they.”
What is so amazing about grace is that we can share the love of God for them to the haters.
Joh 15:26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.
Jesus came as God in human flesh, the God-man, to die on the Cross so that a person might be declared righteous by believing Him. He is the only way, the only truth, the only life. For the purpose of our salvation, God the Father sends God the Holy Spirit to us, to dwell in us, when we believe. He continually sets our affections and attentions on Jesus. In that sense, the Holy Spirit can be called, the “Spirit of Truth,” or the Spirit of Jesus. He is a Person, fully God along with the Father and the Son. But He has a unique ministry subordinate to the Father and the Son.
One of the early Christian Creeds declares this regarding our God in Trinity:
The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
Joh 15:27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.
The word “also” indicates that their “witness” follows upon their receiving the Holy Spirit. Their witness was unique, seeing they were eleven guys who knew more about the Lord than anyone on Earth. But that was not enough. They must rely on the Spirit.
Speaking to pastors, Jay Adam’s said, “You must not exhort your congregation to do whatever the Bible requires of them as though they could fulfill those requirements on their own, but only as a consequence of the saving power of the Cross and the indwelling, sanctifying power and presence of Christ in the Person of the Holy Spirit.”
Joh 16:1 “These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble.
Another über-uplift, #6, is that we need not “stumble” when we experience hatred. The disciples would face excommunication and death. Remembering that Jesus was hated and martyred, and that He had predicted the same for them, they would be able to stand and keep moving forward instead of stumbling and possibly retreating.
We’ve adopted a slogan I picked-up from one of our police chiefs. When asked about a particularly difficult task facing him, he replied calmly and with resolve, “It’s the job.” If you are where you are supposed to be, doing the Lord’s work, when opposition and hatred come, “It’s the job” to respond as God the Holy Spirit leads you.
One of the commentaries said, “Forewarned, forearmed!”
They must not look for a smooth course and a peaceful journey. They must make up their minds to battles, conflicts, wounds, opposition, persecution, and perhaps even death. Like a wise general, Jesus did not conceal from His soldiers the nature of the campaign they were beginning.”
Joh 16:2 They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.
Excommunication. The word itself invokes terror. Herem is the Hebrew word. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community, including shunning them for life.
During their time with Jesus on Earth, the apostle Peter once said, “We have left all, and followed you” (Matthew 19:27). Little did Peter know that his life of leaving all and sacrificing was just starting, and would intensify until he was crucified upside-down.
Joh 16:3 And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.
They refused to recognize the Father at work in the words and deeds of Jesus.
I cited verses in the first chapter of the Book of Romans. There and here, a willful ignorance lies behind the rejection of Jesus. The unsaved know the truth but deliberately suppress it.
A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, (not to be confused with Grandpa Abe Simpson), wrote this over 100 years ago:
“The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God, give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!”
Haters gonna hate… Unless they hear the Gospel and receive our Lord.